What causes children to be successful? What could civic leaders do, for example, to raise test scores in public schools? Daniel Patrick Moynihan, late Senator from New York, once humorously remarked that proximity to Canada was the most effective indicator of success on standardized test scores for schools in America. He was saying that geography had more statistical effect than money on improving education.

Moynihan was expressing the impossible task faced by schools dealing with the disintegrating family. Consider the problem faced by today's schools. Columnist George Will wrote, "No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males."

In 1966 the largest social science report in history, the Coleman Report, concluded that the qualities of the families from which children come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools' effectiveness.

Every age confirms that ethics and virtue matter more than money. In what some consider one of the greatest poems ever written, author Rudyard Kipling penned words entitled, "The gods of the copybook headings". Selected verses are copied.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the gods of the market-place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the gods of the copybook headings, I notice outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That water would certainly wet us, as fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
____________

In the first Carboniferous Era, we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the gods of the copybook headings said: "If you don't work you die."
____________

And after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The gods of the copybook headings with terror and slaughter return.

It is not inevitable that each generation must relive the mistakes of ages past. We can learn from their blunders without repeating them. God gave laws so the willing can avoid experiencing awful consequences. Those laws include the seven annual landmarks to help us understand His Plan.

Tomorrow we will celebrate the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. It reaffirms our belief in Christian virtues. Fads of politics and academia rise and fall but the landmarks of God remain firm throughout history. The faith of Abraham was as valid in his day as it was 2,000 years later when it changed the life of the Apostle Paul. And 2,000 years after Paul the same faith is still valid.

Overcoming sin is a first step toward living a virtuous life. Whether the symbolism is leavening or unclean meats, Christians learn to avoid it. The wages of sin hasn't changed since the days of Adam and will not be amended by the coming of the Messiah.

Thank God for being a patient teacher.

Until next time,